The situation room is already humming when I step off the elevator.

  Three analysts at their stations, tracking police bands and various forums and chatrooms for metahuman activity. Dispatch in the corner, headset on, coordinating with the Delaware Valley Defenders on some overlap in patrol routes. Jenkins from tech support hunched over a workbench, doing something delicate to what looks like one of Jett's backup suits. The smell of coffee and ozone and the faint chemical tang of the medical bay down the hall.

  This is the infrastructure that makes us possible. Not the powers, not the costumes - the people who answer phones and file reports and make sure our gear works when we need it. I make a point to learn their names, ask about their lives. It's not strategy. It's just the right thing to do.

  "Morning, Captain." Rosario from dispatch waves without looking up from her screens. "Quiet night. One noise complaint in Fishtown that turned out to be a kid practicing pyrokinesis in his garage. Parents handled it."

  "Anyone hurt?"

  "Just the garage door. And the kid's allowance for the next six months."

  I smile despite myself. "Small mercies."

  The briefing room is through the double doors at the back. I'm early, but Jett is already there, sprawled in a chair with her feet up on the table, scrolling through something on her tablet. She's in civilian clothes - jeans and a hoodie with flames embroidered on the sleeves, because Jett has never met a theme she wouldn't commit to.

  "Devil." She doesn't look up. "You see the news this morning?"

  "Which part?"

  "Richardson's doing a press tour. Talking about 'next steps' after her big push failed everywhere. No anti-vigilante bills in any northeast states. Maybe she'll have more luck in Texas." Jett's lip curls slightly. "Spinning it as a temporary setback. Building momentum for a gubernatorial run, you think? Or mayor?"

  "Either. Both." I take my usual seat, two chairs down from the head of the table. "She's not the type to retreat."

  "No," Jett agrees. "She's not."

  We sit in silence for a moment. There's a conversation underneath this conversation, one we've been having in fragments for weeks now. Neither of us says it directly. The walls might have ears. Probably do, actually - this is a government facility.

  Miasma drifts in a few minutes later, his hazmat suit rustling softly as he moves. The skull mask is in place, yellow eyes unreadable behind it. He doesn't greet us, just settles into a chair at the far end of the table and pulls out his tablet.

  "Anything interesting?" I ask, more to break the silence than because I expect an answer.

  "The Turnout situation is escalating," he rasps. "Third armored car this month. Always I-95, always between the same two exits. Pattern suggests inside information."

  "Great," Jett mutters. "Another mole hunt."

  "Or just good reconnaissance." Miasma's tone gives away nothing. "Not everything is conspiracy."

  The door bangs open and Patriot strides in, already talking. "Good, you're all here. We've got a full docket today. Richardson wants a visible presence at the community center ribbon-cutting in Gray's Ferry, so Jett, you're on that. Soft power. Smile for the cameras."

  Jett's expression sours but she doesn't argue. Patriot continues, pulling up a map on the main screen.

  "Devil, the Kensington situation needs follow-up. The phase-walker hit another pharmacy last night. CVS on Allegheny. Destroyed about thirty thousand dollars worth of inventory."

  "Casualties?"

  "None. Kid's careful about that, at least." Patriot's jaw tightens. "But careful doesn't make it legal. We need to bring him in before he escalates."

  I think about the sixteen-year-old - probably younger, honestly - breaking into pharmacies to destroy the drugs that are killing his neighborhood. Fentanyl, oxy, Jump. The stuff that's turned Kensington into an open-air morgue. He's not stealing. He's not hurting anyone. He's just a kid who decided to do something about a problem the system can't solve.

  "Any leads on identity?"

  "Working on it. Miasma, I want you coordinating with narcotics division. See if any of their informants have heard anything."

  "Of course." Miasma's voice is perfectly neutral.

  "And while we're on drugs--" Patriot pulls up another file. "There's chatter about something new circulating. Some guy selling, you're gonna love this, small glass corked phials of bubbling pink liquid that produces heart shaped smoke when you uncork it. Calls it 'Love Potion Number Ten'. Down the hatch and you fall in love for a day or two. I don't know if anyone's tried the damn thing yet but we should keep an eye on it before someone starts roofieing Drexel sophomores with it."

  "That's horrifying," Jett says flatly.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  "That's Philadelphia," Patriot replies. "No confirmed cases yet, just rumors. But keep your ears open. If this is real, it's going to be a problem."

  He runs through the rest of the docket - patrol schedules, coordination with the Defenders, the ongoing hunt for Turnout. Normal superhero problems. The machinery of keeping a city safe, or at least safer than it would be otherwise.

  The meeting ends unceremoniously. It sort of peters out, and then Patriot, ever the charmer, gives us this wonderful line; "I have to take a trip to the restroom. Don't wait for me."

  So Jett and I make ourselves scarce, operating on one shared brainwave, once he leaves the room.

  We take the long way to the equipment bay, through corridors that don't have cameras. Or at least, don't have cameras that work - Jenkins mentioned a maintenance backlog last week, and some things accidentally stay broken longer than others.

  "My contact came back," Jett says quietly, once we're clear. "FBI. The Tremont & Fairfax dig."

  "And?"

  "And nothing." She sounds frustrated. "Huang handled our incorporation paperwork. She also handled McKinley's case, pro bono. But she handles hundreds of cases. It's a big firm."

  "What about the new guy? Fairfax?"

  "Clean. Boringly, aggressively clean. Good lawyer, does a lot of criminal defense, wins a normal amount. Funds philanthropy - Jump and Fly treatment programs, which makes sense given his caseload. Has a wife. Registered firearms, all proper paperwork. Background checks come back spotless." Jett shakes her head. "If he's dirty, he's hiding it better than anyone I've ever seen."

  "Or he's not dirty."

  "Or he's not dirty," she agrees reluctantly. "But here's the thing. My contact pulled files on other cases Huang got transferred off of. Tremont & Fairfax cooperated fully - they're good like that, very friendly with law enforcement." The sarcasm is subtle but present. "There's only a couple other cases in Philadelphia. Most of them are their pro bono criminal defense charity case thing. Aaron McKinley. Evan Williams. A couple other assorted nobodies. Huang's the only one that did one of those and then stuck around to file some unrelated Philadelphia paperwork."

  "So why him?"

  "Exactly. Why does a New York megafirm take a pro bono case for a two-bit Philly arsonist who went after a teenage girl? What makes Aaron McKinley special?"

  I don't have an answer. Neither does she. That's the problem.

  We walk in silence for a moment, passing through the equipment bay where Jenkins is still working on Jett's suit. He waves absently; we wave back.

  "There's something else," I say, once we're past. "Patriot."

  Jett's expression shifts. "Yeah. I noticed."

  "Yeah?"

  Jett shows me his phone - what? She wiggles it a little, trapped in her palm. It's still unlocked.

  "Jasmine!" I hiss from between clenched teeth.

  "The American Institute of Dynology's article on 'barokinesis' - pressure control. Super rare. Only two confirmed metahumans, and neither of them are Maya," she recites, reading off his internet tabs like a ledger. "Online encyclopedia article on 'Tyrannosaurus Rex'. And an online encyclopedia article of Richard Duvall. And his high school yearbook. And his stock reports. And his publicly available donor information. This is weather reports for two years ago... And, finally... Councilman Silverstein? What's that scumbag gotta do with any of this?"

  "You stole his phone!" I hiss again.

  "Maybe he's just being Patriot." Jett doesn't sound convinced by her own suggestion, sort of half-ignoring me. I snatch the phone back out of her hands. "Hey! I was reading that,"

  "Don't steal phones. You think he's gonna spend that long in the shitter?" I ask.

  She smiles like she knows something I don't. "Yeah. Don't worry, I'll put it back on his table. But he also had Sweet Lucy's yesterday."

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. "Jasmine."

  "Andrew," she replies, monotone and mocking.

  "He told Maya," I answer her.

  That gets her attention. Her face instantly drops. "Told her what, and when?"

  "Months ago. Right after McNulty brought it to him." I'd pieced this together from fragments - overheard conversations, meeting notes that didn't quite add up. "He walked into her office and told her a teenage vigilante thinks she's Kingdom."

  Jett stares at me. "That's either incredibly stupid or..."

  "Or something else," I finish. "I don't know which."

  We reach the corridor that leads to the training room. Through the window, I can see the heavy bag I was planning to work on later. My claws sit on my shoulders like two invisible albatrosses. Jett snatches the phone back out of my hand, locks it, and takes a quick detour to the men's room. When she gets back a minute later, the phone's gone.

  "What about Miasma?" Jett asks, without elaborating on any of the prior events that just happened.

  "What about him?"

  "He's been... different lately. More distant. Half the time I can't tell if he's following orders or just going through the motions."

  "I don't know what his deal is," I admit. "But I don't think he's fully on board with... whatever this is."

  "You think he knows something?"

  "I think he knows a lot of things. Getting him to share them is the problem."

  We've circled back to the main corridor now, approaching the area with working cameras. The conversation has to end, or at least change registers.

  "The ribbon-cutting," Jett says, louder now, back to normal volume. "What's the dress code? Business casual or full costume?"

  "Costume. Richardson wants the visual."

  "Of course she does." Jett rolls her eyes theatrically. "Fine. But if I have to shake hands with another city councilman who stares at my chest, I'm filing a complaint."

  "File it with HR. I hear they're very responsive."

  "Ha." She peels off toward the locker room. "Catch you later, Devil. And hey--" She pauses, glancing back. "Be careful with the Kensington kid. He's not wrong about the drugs."

  "I know."

  "I know you know. Just... remember that when you find him."

  She's gone before I can respond. I stand in the corridor for a moment, thinking about phase-walkers and love potions and a law firm in New York that handles too many Philadelphia cases. About Patriot's weather reports and Miasma's silences and a city councilwoman who might be running a criminal empire or might be the victim of one or might be something in between.

  We know so much. We have names - Mr. Polygraph, in custody but not for long; Mr. Nothing and Mr. Mudslide, but they're both gone now; Mrs. Zenith, who is probably Upper Management, or at least Philadelphia's piece of it. We know the scale of the Kingdom's operations, the drugs and the rackets and the violence. We know enough to be dangerous.

  But we don't know enough to act. Not yet. Not without proof that would hold up, that would stick, that wouldn't get thrown out by some judge who cares more about procedure than justice.

  And underneath all of it, the question we can't answer: Is Maya Richardson Mrs. Zenith? Or is she working with Mrs. Zenith? Or is she just a pawn, being used by someone smarter and more ruthless than she appears?

  Fifty-fifty, I'd say. Maybe worse. My gut says she's Zenith. But a hunch isn't evidence. A hunch isn't something you can take to NSRA. A hunch is just a feeling, and feelings get people killed when you act on them without proof. A hunch isn't something you can use to get a warrant for ESPer action. Or even the warrant to request a warrant.

  The training room calls to me. I have an hour before I need to head to Kensington, an hour to work the bag and clear my head.